Sunday, February 16, 2014

Spotlight: Zica Six Million Dollar Man

Welcome to a new feature on PlaidStallions, the
spotlight, which will revolve around items such as toys, books and DVDs
available today that give that retro vibe to me.

I’m hesitant to call them reviews, mostly because I personally don’t think action
figure criticism is something I want to do. If I like something, I’ll post
pictures and give reasons why I enjoy it and you make up your own mind up whether
it’s right for you or not.

Our first spotlight subject is the latest thing to hit
my doorstep, the ZICA Six Million Dollar man action figures. Read it after the jump:

Like a lot of 70s kids, I spent many a summer day
running slowly and making sounds as I did it, Steve Austin was my first
superhero. While, I absolutely loved the Kenner toy line as a boy, I do
remember not loving the fact that Steve couldn’t hang out with General Urko and
Robin.

The 3 ¾” retro revolution began last year with Super 7’s awesome Alien series
and ZICA announced their Six Million Dollar Man line quite quickly after. Both
fall into the category of “Kenner should have made these!” and it seems that if
you love the format, you’re in for a great 2014.

While I’m not a big Alien fan, the mad genius behind a
lot of that (Hi Frank!) put so much care into making you believe it was
produced in 1979 that they had my money on sheer principle.

The folks at
Zica had the advantage just because they had me at on the onset but I am happy
to say, they didn’t let me down.

The figures are sculpted in a retro Kenner style,
while crude, they perfectly encapsulate what the figures would have looked like
in 1978, that’s the key here. Also, the likeness is terrific, Steve captures
Lee Majors simply and Bigfoot looks like the original Kenner figure, shrunk
down in size. Perfect!

The packaging closely emulates a Kenner action figure
package, which pretty much became an industry standard size in 1979. The art
work is great and highly reminiscent of the Kenner SMDM artwork, though it has
been clearly recreated. It would have been easy to use photos but the folks at
ZICA chose to hire an illustrator, another lost art of toy packaging.

Kenner Bigfoot meets his non motor cycle riding counterpart.

I normally have no bones about sending modern toy
packaging to the recycle box but these gave me pause.

There are three figures in the set, Steve Austin, Big Foot and a variant blue track suited
Steve. That variant actually happened in the Kenner day, so it’s so toy nerdy I
think it’s great. I’ve decided to keep that Steve carded, so it’s win/win.

The world's greatest heroes finally meet!

Zica is promising four more figures in the set, I can honestly say that
I’m on board and hope for more from them in the future.

4 comments:

Is that Isaac from The Love Boat? Also, I like how Luke Skywalker is standing off to the side, looking at all the cool kids. I would need Han Solo to be in there somewhere for true perfection. I had that Buck Rogers, but my favorite from that line was Tiger Man. :)